Improper sorting and excessive contamination have prevented effective recycling and composting programs in large public facilities. According to the EPA, only 32 percent of recyclables are recovered. While sorting technology is available for material recovery facilities, collecting clean, valuable materials at facilities remains challenging. Environmental teams at major public facilities strongly need insightful data and sorting at the point of disposal to achieve zero waste.
Recycling rules are often complex and vary based on location, which results in user confusion when throwing items away. In hospitals with transient populations, this leads to large-scale contamination, low recycling yields, and poor diversion.
Six TrashBots were piloted at a Hospital in LA, impacting more than 240,000 visitors during the three-month performance period.
The work carried out during this pilot will continue to influence diversion rates and accelerate sustainable long-term purchasing at the facility. Looking to the future, the facility will increase the number of TrashBots deployed as they improve recovery rates - identify and eliminate zero waste challenges across their campus. This Phase I project successfully shows that a facility can immediately achieve:
